Dienstag, 5. April 2011

"Heading toward an Israeli apartheid state"

"The tsunami of racist laws passed by the Knesset in recent months is also being explained by reasoned and worthy arguments: the right of small communities to preserve their own character (the Acceptance Committees Law); the state's right to prevent hostile use of the funds it allocates to education and culture (the Nakba Law); and the right to deny citizenship to persons convicted of espionage or treason (the Citizenship Law). But I believe that as in other historical instances, the aim of this legislation is the gradual establishment of an apartheid state in Israel, and the future separation on a racial basis of Jews and non-Jews.
An apartheid state is not created in the blink of an eye. What was created in Germany in 1935 was the outcome of a long and sometimes violent debate, which had been ongoing since the middle of the 19th century, about the place of Jews in modern Germany and Europe […] However, once the seeds were sown, no one was able to figure out what fruit they would bear."Holocaust-Forscher und Leiter des Instituts für Zeitgenössisches Judentum an der Hebräischen Universität Jerusalem, Daniel Blatman, in einem Haaretz-Kommentar (4 April)